Chapter 223: Management Office of the Continental Hotel

Henry's black clinic, besides serving as the Continental Hotel's external outpost, had no obligation to report patient movements, but he did not object to earning some extra cash.

After all, from the hotel's standpoint, aside from those who paid in gold coins and required strict confidentiality, everyone else could be sold out.

Don't think that organizations like theirs, being black-market groups, possess any special integrity. The loyalty of stabbing two ribs for a brother exists only on the lips; putting integrity up for a fixed price is the daily routine.

So although he was inside, Henry maintained an attitude of being detached, ready to pull out at any moment.

But he also had to confuse others, making them think he was deeply entrenched in the Continental Hotel's system. Otherwise, why would Bai Bai let Henry fleece them?

To achieve this, he could only rely on acting skills.

Since it was not rush hour, traffic in the city center was relatively smooth. In no time, Henry turned into the parking lot near the Continental Hotel, parked his car, and entered the hotel through a side door on foot.

The side door had no concierge staff, nor did it connect to the lobby; instead, it led directly to the management office in the basement. This area included functions such as intelligence collection and trading, and bounty boards, and was very lively.

However, for the hotel's contracted gunmen, with just one gold coin, a dedicated person would run up and down for you, selecting suitable missions and collecting corresponding information.

But Henry, like most rookies or broke folks, still came to the basement himself to deal directly with the hotel staff. He sat down at a counter in front of a beautiful woman wearing a light gray professional OL suit.

If one ignored her purple-dyed sky-high short hair, nose ring, black lipstick, and the large tattoos extending from her chest, where several buttons had burst open, all the way to her cheeks, one might think she was an elite graduate from a prestigious university working on Wall Street.

But looking at her overall style, one would feel she was some delinquent girl who had gone straight, yet still kept ties with her past yellow-haired lover.

"Hi, Lina, your style today is still so unique. Just this perfume... a citrus scent, very unfamiliar." Henry greeted the Miss before him while handing over the intelligence materials he had prepared.

"This is my grandmother's ancestral secret recipe. Besides its natural and elegant fragrance, it also has a skin-nourishing effect. I don't tell just anyone."

The young girl had Native American blood, so she had many such ancestral folk remedies. Henry even suspected her ancestors might have had a lineage of shamans or medicine men. Such things came in sets.

However, Henry did not pry into her secrets; instead, he praised her: "I was saying, usually girls' hands are rough and unbearable. To keep them well-maintained, one must be a young girl who does no work and is well-fed by her family.

"Unlike you, so diligent, so capable, yet you can keep your hands as delicate as a baby's. Let me see, tut-tut, this is almost as smooth as milk."

Henry naturally took hold of those hands painted with red nail polish, rubbing the fingertips one by one, playing with them carefully.

Lina did not resist such behavior, but she also did not let Henry indulge to his heart's content. Just as the moment was neither too early nor too late, she quickly flipped her hand and slapped away the Kryptonian's mischievous little hand, saying, "Just touching hands is enough? I gave you the phone call long ago."

"Hehe, do you have a boyfriend? Not ruining other people's love is my life principle. Because I fear being hated by too many people." Having bragged, Henry quickly changed the subject, saying, "Hurry and check for me, see how much money I can get this time."

"Even without ruining it, you will still be hated, you know." Lina rolled her eyes, then put on her thin-rimmed glasses, switching to work mode.

While reading the intelligence Henry brought, she rapidly tapped on the computer keyboard.

On that large CRT screen with its big backside was the classic black-background, green-text display. As a system nearly as old as the banking system, predating the rise of personal computers, the Continental Hotel had established its database system and index very early on, providing terminals for multiple users.

However, in the early days, the threshold for computer operation was high; all commands had to be memorized. The girls at the counter, who could flexibly use these systems that might have been built only a few years ago but were already considered antiques in the information industry, had certainly put in hard work.

But once mastered, a database system with powerful indexing functions could become a significant aid.

At least for the intelligence Henry brought, the girls did not have to search through paper files according to alphabetical indexes and then laboriously verify the content. The workday would start at three days minimum.

By entering search keywords based on names, all relevant content in the database would immediately appear on the screen in the form of entries.

If there were too many people with the same name, one would add second or third conditions to filter out irrelevant content. If necessary, further manual deletion could be performed.

Although according to the rules, one had to verify the new intelligence content against the existing intelligence in the database to determine the overlap rate, using this to judge the bounty amount for that intelligence.

However, reading and subjective judgment easily became points of contention. So in practical operation, the girls in the intelligence department decided the price of the intelligence based on the number of entries finally filtered out.

One screen could display ten intelligence entries. If the filtered content was nothing, then that intelligence would fetch the maximum amount of ten coins.

For every additional entry, the bounty amount would decrease by one coin. If the number of related intelligence items was so large that one page could not display them all, then only the minimum one-coin intelligence fee would be given.

This method of judgment could be understood by anyone who could count, reducing many disputes. But actually, there was still room for manipulation behind the scenes.

Simply put, how keywords are chosen and how many conditions are set will all affect the final number of intelligence entries displayed. This is also why Henry wanted to build rapport with these girls.

Whether others knew or not was their problem.

As Lina verified, she picked up a red pen and noted the bounty amount on the intelligence documents. After checking all the documents, she took off her glasses and said, "Your bounty today is twenty-three coins. Do you want change or a single bill?"

"Give me a single bill. I still need to replenish some medicines and consumables; change is not very convenient."

Although Henry had promised not to sell drugs at the black clinic, what everyone implied was actually things like meth; medical drugs such as antibiotics were still needed.

"Please wait a moment." Lina smiled in a very formulaic way. At the same time, she rolled up the paper documents and placed them into a cylinder. Then she stuffed the entire cylinder into the pneumatic transmission tube behind her.

With a "Whoosh!" sound, the new intelligence was sent into the data room responsible for inputting and storing paper documents. There, more hands were responsible for related matters.

Lina, who was in charge of the front desk, took out the full amount of cash from the cash register, counted it, and placed it on the tray in front of Henry.

(End of this chapter)